Late summer / early fall can sometimes be a bit challenging for foodies. Some days it's still so hot that you can't stand the idea of running your oven all day...but other days, the breeze starts to cool or the sky clouds over and the yen to stew something takes over. Such was the weather this past weekend - some clouds and rain, but temperatures still fairly warm...a sort of middle ground, no man's land.

Your intrepid blogger and her co-conspirator woke up Sunday and just could not decide what to cook...ideas were flying fast and furious, and nothing seemed to stick. All we knew for sure was that a) the Pats were the late afternoon game, and b) the bread fairy had struck the night before, when I came home to a bag full of delicious bakery bread and rolls tied to my front door. (The bread fairy - a.k.a my neighbor with a friend that owns a bakery - has been hanging out quite a bit these past months...good thing we're not avoiding carbs, or anything :) ). .

So there I was in the shower, when suddenly it hit me and I started yelling..."short ribs ! I want short ribs ! And bread pudding...with Gruyere and leeks, like the one at Sprigs ! ". (Yes, things like that are yelled in my shower quite often...welcome to my world.). A quick trip to the store, and we were ready to start cooking.

veggies for short rib braise

bread ready for pudding

The short rib recipe we based ours on was one from Food Network , which we basically really liked - the major tweaks were to swap in some shallots for onions, and some port for some of the red wine. Shallots and port both add such a lovely richness to any dish, and they definitely both make sweet, sweet love to short ribs. The only other tweak we would make would be to cut down the amount of tomato paste - there's really no need for an entire cup and a half, one cup would do very nicely.

veggies and paste reducing

browned and ready !

ribs nestled in goodness

As for the Gruyere-Leek  Bread Pudding...I have been lusting after this ever since the first time I had it at Sprigs. I love, love, love leeks...serious love. Everything tastes better with leeks ! A little web surfing revealed that a lot of people were very fond of Thomas Keller's recipe - which did look promising, though I knew I definitely wanted Gruyere instead of Comt